FrontLine Defence magazine

Militarily, Halifax is unique. It is one of the few locations outside the national capital where senior commanders for Canada’s army, navy and air force reside, and where their various units operate. The city os the operational home for the Royal Canadian Navy; the centre of excellence for Canada’s maritime aviation; and the historic headquarters for army reserves, dubbed “part time soldiers,” throughout Atlantic Canada. (Read more)

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Canada’s Maritime Predators: Victoria-class submarines:

There is a reason the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) submarine HMCS Windsor and her three sisters, Victoria, Corner Brook and Chicoutimi, carry the imposing moniker of hunter-killer submarines (SSK). Under ordinary circumstances they conduct their patrols and interact with other Canadian warships and allied navies with quiet professionalism, but when the circumstances require, they can quickly transform into predators, seeking vessels that use Canadian waters for illegal activities . . . (Read more)

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Military Justice: past its “best-before” date:

As a recruit enrols in the Canadian Armed Forces, he or she immediately becomes subject to the provisions of the National Defence Act, part of which includes the Code of Service Discipline (CSD), the web of law and regulation that governs all aspects of a serviceperson’s life. It identifies who is subject to its jurisdiction and defines military offences; it incorporates all offences under the Criminal Code, the federal statutes and foreign laws; it mandates service tribunals for summary trials and courts martial, and establishes the post-trial review or appeal of findings and sentence. The CSD touches every part of a military member’s life. (Read more)

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Rethinking Nuclear Submarines:

It’s no secret that Canada has problems with military acquisition. DND and its partner departments do a good job relating major equipment purchases to a bona fide requirement that has been vetted through the policy deliberation process. However, the Canadian version of the Westminster parliamentary system does not leave much room for senior public servants and military officers to engage in a symmetrical dialogue with the public about these issues. The inevitable consequence is a misinformed and unsupportive Canadian public. Cases in point include the 1987 proposal to purchase nuclear submarines, the EH-101 Maritime Helicopter; and most recently, the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter. (Read more)

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Rethinking the Role of the Military Police: Instead of the new age of peace that had been so eagerly anticipated at the end of the Cold War, new conflicts arose and Canadians began to see military personnel return, some as fallen, to travel along Ontario’s Highway of Heroes, others broken, with injuries so severe that their lives were profoundly shattered. Some were invisible wounds, and our society gradually became aware of the debilitating effects of post traumatic stress disorder. Many of those affected made concerted efforts to deal with their malady, some with greater success than others. (Read more)

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National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy I: Dalhousie University’s day-long conference: The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy – Charting the Course, made it abundantly clear that Canada needed to rejuvenate its shipbuilding industry to reverse its headlong thrust into irrelevance. (Read more)

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Time for NATO’s “silent partner to step up . . . : On any given day, representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are quick to opine that Canada is one of the lesser contributors to the alliance, that the Canadian defence budget is inadequate to meet the alliance’s defence goals, and that Canada has reneged on her commitments to the alliance . . . (Read more)

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HMCS Charlottetown and the Battle of Misrata: Initially, Charlottetown operated in international waters off the coast of Libya, but moved into Libyan territorial waters near the country’s third largest city, Misrata, as Gadhafi’s offensive forces fired rockets and artillery into the port and the city. With the ship within a few kilometers of the city, residents of Misrata had a very visible demonstration of NATO’s support, and it showed Gadhafi’s forces that the Alliance was poised to take decisive action to protect non-combatants. (Read more)

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Halifax International Security Forum: Defence Minister Peter MacKay opened the three-day Halifax International Security Forum on 18November with an evaluation that “this Forum comes at a difficult time when we must find ways to be more productive, more agile and more nimble. Most of us struggle to decide the how [to do that], and that is the raison d’être to this forum, to bring people together in an informative, intelligent and calm way to discuss these important and sensitive issues and to learn from each other.” (Read more)

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Maritime Threats: The world’s oceans are anything but peaceful, in fact, the seas are more like “the wild west,” says Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden, the former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). A recent Maritime Security Conference in Halifax provided a forum for leaders of international navies to discuss the global concerns of maritime piracy, human trafficking, pollution, resource theft. the global drug trade — and to examine how to reduce these threats on the global waterways. (Read more)

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Callsign 66: The sniper has added to the chaos of battle and the fog of war since the Boer War. A single bullet has halted the advance of enemy troops, confused battle plans and injected an additional level of fear into an adversary’s troops. As a constant factor in modern warfare, the snipers have been the army’s most economical force multiplier, (Read more)

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The Canadian Army’s Combat Training Centre at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, New Brunswick, has adapted modeling and simulation technology to the Army’s unique training demands. (Read more)

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Rear-Admiral David Gardam: Rear-Admiral David Gardam, Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy’s east coast command, speaks about his vision for the his command and his perspective of future programs. (Read more)

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Victory in Afghanistan: There is disagreement among commentators, pundits and politicians about what “victory” in Afghanistan will look like. Some say that allied military operations must end in a decisive victory, and others say that this is impossible and we need, instead, to define the circumstances – the endstate -that will permit allied nations to redeploy, leaving Afghan security in Afghan hands: Frontline Canada published my op-ed article on this subject in their August 2009 issue. (Read more)

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Dispelling Myths: Brigadier-General Denis Thompson returned to Canada following his term as commander of the Canadian force in Afghanistan, he spoke to a number of audiences across Canada about the work of the Canadian Forces in Kandahar province. Frontline Magazine published my article, summarizing his comments and an interview I conducted with him in its April 2009 issue. (Read more)

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Afghanistan-A Pivotal Year: In the Fall of 2008, the Embassy of the United States of America in Ottawa very generously hosted video conferences by two noted experts on Afghanistan affairs, Alexander Thier and David Kilcullen. Frontline Magazine published my article summarizing these two video-conferences in its February 2009 issue. (Read more)